Alexander Hinton: "It Can Happen Here 2.0: Democratic Backsliding and the Rising Threat of Violence in the U.S."
- Date
- 25 September 2025, 14:15–16:00
- Location
- Thunberg Lecture Hall, Linneanum, Villavägen 6c, Uppsala
- Type
- Lecture
- Web page
- https://www.swedishcollegium.se/
- Organiser
- Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS)
- Contact person
- Mattias Bolkéus Blom
Alexander Hinton (Rutgers University) will give a CUSP lecture on the topic "It Can Happen Here 2.0: Democratic Backsliding and the Rising Threat of Violence in the U.S.". The lecture will be followed by a Q&A session. Hybrid event - see the webpage for the Zoom link. This is a collaboration between SCAS and the Uppsala Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Uppsala University.
ABSTRACT:
Drawing on years of research on U.S. political culture and Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, this paper examines the logics of the MAGA movement, how its future-oriented messaging is rhetorically packaged and driven, and how the movement poses challenges to democracy and stability in the U.S., including the risk of political violence. In doing so, the paper reconsiders the author’s book, It Can Happen Here: White Power and the Rising Threat of Genocide in the US (NYU Press, 2021), which was centered on Trump’s first term. There are important continuities between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0, but the threat is now greater and following a very clear plan to erode traditional checks and balances, expand executive power, and undertake related initiatives detailed in documents like “Project 2025.”
Alexander Hinton is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Director of the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, and UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention at Rutgers University.
CUSP is an arena for addressing big societal challenges of our time: social, political, cultural, economic, environmental, and/or medical. In an effort to give voice to urgent societal problems, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) invites academics, policy-makers, artists, and other actors to publicly address such global concerns.